Gottfried Emanuel Noether (7 January 1915 – 22 August 1991) was a German-born American
statistician
A statistician is a person who works with theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private and public sectors.
It is common to combine statistical knowledge with expertise in other subjects, and statisticians may wor ...
and
educator
A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching.
''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. whe ...
; one of the third generation of a famous family of mathematicians: he was the son of
Fritz Noether and nephew of
Emmy Noether, the grandson of
Max Noether, and brother of chemist Herman Noether. He died in
Willimantic,
Connecticut.
Education and career
Noether was born into a Jewish family in
Karlsruhe,
Grand Duchy of Baden
The Grand Duchy of Baden (german: Großherzogtum Baden) was a state in the southwest German Empire on the east bank of the Rhine. It existed between 1806 and 1918.
It came into existence in the 12th century as the Margraviate of Baden and subs ...
,
German Empire
The German Empire (),Herbert Tuttle wrote in September 1881 that the term "Reich" does not literally connote an empire as has been commonly assumed by English-speaking people. The term literally denotes an empire – particularly a hereditary ...
in 1915. He later moved to
Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland). The Nazi regime annulled his citizenship. He immigrated to the United States in 1939, where he earned a
bachelor's degree (1940) and a
master's degree (1941).
The following four years, during
World War II, he served with
US Army intelligence
The United States Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) is a direct reporting unit that conducts Military intelligence, intelligence, security, and Information Operations (United States), information operations for United States Army c ...
in
England,
France, and
Germany. Noether was one of the
Ritchie Boys.
[See the Appendix in ''Sons and Soldiers: The Untold Story of the Jews Who Escaped the Nazis and Returned with the U.S. Army to Fight Hitler'' by Bruce Henderson.] After the war, he earned a
doctorate from
Columbia University (1949).
He worked in
academia for the rest of his career, beginning at
New York University. He moved to
Boston University in 1952 where he worked until he joined the faculty of the
University of Connecticut in 1968. There, he eventually became
chairman
The chairperson, also chairman, chairwoman or chair, is the presiding officer of an organized group such as a board, committee, or deliberative assembly. The person holding the office, who is typically elected or appointed by members of the grou ...
of the department of statistics. He retired in 1985.
Statistician
Noether served on a statistical advisory
committee for the
United States Office of Management and Budget and as an associate
editor
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, photographic, visual, audible, or cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing process can involve correction, condensation, orga ...
of ''
The American Statistician''. He was a fellow of the
American Statistical Association and the
Institute of Mathematical Statistics.
As an expert on
non-parametric statistics, he wrote over 50 articles and six books. He also wrote a brief biography of his father Fritz, who was
executed in the
Soviet Union in 1941.
Honors
In 1999, the
Gottfried E. Noether Awards were established to "recognize distinguished researchers and teachers and to support research in the field of nonparametric statistics." The initial recipients of the Gottfried E. Noether Senior Scholar Awards were
Erich Leo Lehmann (2000),
Robert V. Hogg
Robert Vincent ("Bob") Hogg (8 November 1924 – 23 December 2014) was an American statistician and professor of statistics of the University of Iowa. Hogg is known for his widely used textbooks on statistics (with his 1963 Ph.D. student Elliot A ...
(2001), and
Pranab K. Sen
Pranab Kumar Sen (born 7 November 1937 in Calcutta, India)[Curriculum vitae](_blank)
, retriev ...
(2002).
References
* (obituary)
* (obituary)
*
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External links
About the ''Gottfried E. Noether Awards'', with photograph
{{DEFAULTSORT:Noether, Gottfried E.
1915 births
1991 deaths
Columbia University alumni
Jewish American military personnel
American statisticians
20th-century American educators
University of Connecticut faculty
Boston University faculty
New York University faculty
United States Army personnel of World War II
Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United States
Scientists from Karlsruhe
Fellows of the American Statistical Association
20th-century American mathematicians
20th-century American Jews